Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

characterized as piracy.” 74 Some historians and jurists, for example, tend to
describe the sinking of merchant vessels by the Germans during the First World
War as piracy even though the act was done on the authority of a national
state. 75 This example is worth noting because, in many ways, German sea
warfare has been compared to the 300 years long corsairing of the regency of
Algiers. Although both are tagged piracy, legally they are considered legitimate
acts of war. In 1918, the British jurist and scholar J. E. G. Montmorency wrote
pressing for classification of German submarine warfare as act of piracy. To
give weight to his argument, he likened it to Muslim corsairing because in the
western mind the latter was indisputably piracy:
During the age of Grotius the pirate states of the Mediterranean were at
the height of their power, and certainly the treaty with Algiers of 1646
which purported to secure freedom for English trade and exemption
from slavery for English subjects did little to save the world from the
evils of state-organized piracy. The group of piratical states had the
substantial support of the Ottoman Porte. The robber fleets of
Barbarossa II operating from Algiers dominated the Mediterranean and
terrorised Spain and Italy under the direct patronage of Solyman the
Magnificent. From that date until 1816 the Barbary States carried on,
with a thoroughness that Germany might envy, the highly organised
business of piracy. And no one hesitated to call it piracy. For centuries
Europe strove to grapple with the evil by perpetual warfare illuminated
by treaties of peace at which the pirates laughed. 76
This long quote deserves consideration because it is typical of the
classical western thought that tends to put corsairing on the same footing as
piracy. It is also illustrative of the biased approach that a researcher usually
74 “Piracy,” The Columbia Encyclopedia. (Accessed 17 May 2008).
75 Frothingham, “The Armed Merchantman,” p. 470-471.
76 J. E. G. de Montmorency, “The Barbary States in International Law,” Transactions of the Grotius
Society, vol. 4 (1918), p. 87.
86